From the casted part till full assembled and painten wheel hub

For our sister company VDL TIM we have developed a manufacturing process to build wheel hubs for trucks. One of the challenges was to incorporate the many variants in combination with a quick cycletime. The total scope included the milling and assembly of 57 different types of wheel hubs. From disk brake hubs to drum brake hubs with all different diameters, bearings, seals etc.

The line includes 6 CNC machines to mill the casted parts to dimensions. An ID is laser engraved in the hub to enable data tracking throughout the whole line. A 3D measurement and an inline porosity check ensures for the required quality.

After painting, the hubs are loaded into the assembly line. In each process step components such as bearings, seals, clips, sensor wheels are pressed into the hub. To meet the quality requirements the inner bearings and seals are pressed in a cleanroom ensuring a clean fit. For the disk brake hubs the disks and clips are bolted in the latter stations. A final swing meaurement on the hub ensures final quality. The hubs are placed in the final packaging automatically ensuring little involvement from an operator. Troughout the whole process all the measurements, pressing forces, strokes and sensor data is stored to the ID code. Enabling a stream of data across all hubs which can be traced back to a single hub.

Inbetween the CNC milling line and assembly line an automated warehouse stores the hubs during the different production phases as well as the disk brakes. For loading and unloading the warehouse the buffer ensures decoupling between logistic activities and production activites boosting the overall availability of the line. The total capacity of the automated warehouse is 600 pallet places and can therefore store several thousant of hubs accross different stages of the production process.